A Brief Encounter
by Quillified
Summary: What if the woman you love couldn't know you existed, or the world would end? A very different approach to Unknown Guy's cryptic appearance. T for mentioned character death.


What if the woman you love could never know you existed, because if she did, the world would end?

I come from a future torn with war and death. It's not a pleasant one. I'm sorry to say I was the cause of it.

When I was young I was struck with a stray time travelling beam from some evil scientist's machine. It didn't affect me until the most traumatic event of my life occured. Now I have no control over where and when I go. It's completely randomized.

In my world, I loved a girl named Candace. She was everything to me, so full of spunk and life I couldn't stay away. She was seeing someone at the time, a boy named Jeremy. I snatched her away and that broke Jeremy's heart. He and I fought one day, and in anger I accidentally killed him. Candace was inconsolable for a while, but it was Jeremy's small sister whom I should have feared. In her grief and anger Suzy Johnson became deranged and gained control over the tri-state area, intent on using her power to crush anyone even remotely connected to Candace Flynn. She turned Danville into a war zone.

I digress. I've since left that future behind. I pop in and out of time and space, wandering aimlessly through the ages. This fine afternoon, I'm back in Danville, on a very familiar street.

I don't know what year it is, but judging by the models of the cars, I'd say about when she and I were teenagers.

Sure enough, I hear her voice. She's surrounded by her friends, laughing on the sidewalk, leaning on her bike. I can't help myself. I walk towards her. She's quite a ways away. I could still turn back. The future could still change.

"Didn't you get my message?" a girl asks, and I feel the familiar weight of history not yet happened as I see her. Stacey Hirano. She had an eyepatch and short-cropped hair last I saw her. She'd just lost Coltrane to one of Suzy's robot cronies and carried her rocket launcher with more familiarity than the Stacey in this age ever could imagine. "Call you later, best friends forever, Stacey?"

Candace giggles in the way I remember means she made a mistake. There's still room to turn back, I think desperately. I happen to look over and in the backyard see a familiar redheaded boy, his British brother, and the Mexican-Jewish girl from across the street. Isabella looks at Phineas how she did before a grenade took his life. In my time she clings to Ferb and he to her like desperate drowning rats. I don't know if they made it or not.

"I kinda thought you guys were avoiding me," she says, and I abruptly stop. I'm right behind her friends, right in her line of vision if she'd just turn her head the right angle. I speak before I can stop myself.

"Actually, I've been avoiding you," I say, my voice back to wavering between high-pitched and deep. They all turn around to look, and with a start I see Jeremy, alive and well. His eyes are untainted by hate, his neck quite straight and not broken by a collision with a concrete parking marker. There's a moment of silence as she looks at me.

"Do I know you?" she asks, and suddenly I know I can do this. Once her eyes warmed at the sight of me and sighed my name when I came home safe and sound to her. That time isn't now. That Candace is dead. I know because after she sacrificed herself for me I first traveled through time, back to the day of her birth. She wanted kids. Xavier and Amanda, as I recall. In my future, she never got them. She never got them because she was with me.

Keep it light, I think to myself, and smile. "No," I reply, "that's how well it's been working." I turn on my heel. "Unknown guy is out! Peace!" If she were my Candace she would have appreciated that exit and laughed. But here, in this world, she wasn't mine anymore. Here, she could grow up and marry Jeremy and have kids and never know who I was. In this world, she could raise her family and grow old with a man who wouldn't put her in danger and who could make her happy.

By the time I reach the end of the street I'm gone again, back to some other time, and I reflect on why I haven't disappeared yet. I saw a time from Candace's good future when she meddled with a time machine and the Candace from a bad future popped out of existence. As a formidable T-Rex runs across my path, chasing a familiar screaming figure, I allow myself a small smile.

There's still chances for that awful future to happen, chances for me to return to her arms and relive my hell all over again. This...this time-traveling isn't so bad. At least here, I get to hear her voice and see her everywhen I go. She can never again be mine, not if I want to save her, but for now, I can disract the T-Rex while Phineas and Ferb contact the past and bring help. I've seen how this plays out before, after all.

* * *

A/N: At last, my first attempt at Phineas and Ferb fic! For some reason I've recently become facinated by Unknown Guy. Call me crazy (everyone else does, har har), but this idea wouldn't leave me alone and I thought it would make a decent one-shot. I apologize for nothing.

Reviews are nice and I would like to know what y'all think, plz! :D


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